President Trump's 'Third Country Deportations,' Explained

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0:28Deported to South Sudan, eight people. Deported to Eswatini, 15 people. Deported to Equatorial Guinea, 29 people. Deported to Ghana, at least 60 people. Over the past year, the U.S. government has deported hundreds of people using a rare method of removal, putting them on a plane and sending them to another country, not the one they immigrated from. Often it's a country they have no ties to. It's called a third-country deportation. When the deportees arrive, the third country detains them, or it ships them right back out to their country of origin, places where some people say they'll face persecution or death.

1:07Why has the Trump administration relied on this policy as part of its immigration crackdown? And what could a recent ruling by a federal judge mean for the future of these kinds of deportations? I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We'll answer these questions and more after a short break. Stay with us.

1:29Welcome back, and let's get into the conversation and meet our guests. Joining us from Atlanta is Meredith Yoon. She's litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, and she's advised attorneys with clients in immigration detention. Meredith, welcome to the program. Hi, Jen. Thanks for having me on. And joining us from Brooklyn, New York, is Sarah Stillman. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and director of the Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale University. Sarah, welcome to you as well. Hi, thanks for having me here. Sarah, given the reporting on how the administration carried out these deportations, including your reporting, it sounds like there were two types of third country deportations.

2:07There were people who had convictions for violent crimes and it served their sentences. And second, there was a larger group of people with no violent criminal records who had asylum claims and legal protections from U.S. immigration courts. So we'll talk a bit about those specifics in a moment. But first, how has this third country deportation policy worked in practice? Walk us through how it happens step by step. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. This policy has really happened in phases, and it started, I would argue, quite intentionally by targeting people who had previous serious criminal convictions, many of whom had gotten out of prison and were living their lives and had been for quite some time, and then got rounded up.

2:45And in this very, very public way, the Trump administration boasted of sending a group of those people to places like South Sudan and Eswatini, where they had no prior relationships. So I'm thinking about, for instance, a man I interviewed, Orville Atoria, who came to this country in 1976 at the age of 12, served time for a serious criminal conviction. And then he was out living with his family when he got picked up by ICE. And instead of sending him back to Jamaica, which is where he assumed he would go, he was sent all the way to Eswatini, where he had no relationships. So the first round of cases I looked at were similar to that.

3:24But increasingly what we've seen is also people who are individuals who had sought asylum here and gone through the legal steps to try to get safety in the U.S. because they had fled really dangerous situations. And in many cases, the judge actually agreed with them that they faced potential torture or had credible fears of serious persecution if they would be sent back to their home countries. So instead of granting them, even after the judge granted them that protection, the Trump administration has been effectuating those people's removals to other countries, such as Ghana, where the countries like Ghana have then sent them back to the countries from which they had protection, from which they had fears of persecution.

4:04Meredith, why has the Trump administration chosen to use this method? Are there legal issues the administration gets around by deporting people to a third country? The administration has really taken up this policy in a manner to sort of attempt to deport people who have protections from deportation and skirt the requirements of those orders. Specifically, the forms of removal, like Sarah described, that many people were granted include protection under the Convention Against Torture or the Immigration and Nationality Act withholding of removal, which means that they likely will face persecution.

4:45or torture if deported back to their countries. So instead of deporting them to their countries, the Trump administration is deporting people to other countries, not as permanent destinations, but essentially as transit hubs, where they're then thereafter very quickly sent back to the very countries that they were ordered protections from. So in a sense, it's exploiting a backdoor to skirt their obligations to protect those who face persecution and torture. Well, we got this message from a member of the 1A Tax Club. What happens to a person who is deported to that country? Are they free to move on?

5:24Are they imprisoned? What, if any, rights do they have in the new country? Now, Sarah, you heard from people who were detained in Ghana after the administration sent them on one of these flights. Describe how you heard from them and what they told you about their experience. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the most alarming things is not just that people are being sent to countries where they have no relationships, but then what happens after them is perhaps even more shocking. I spoke to multiple people who were detained in the context of Eswatini. We couldn't even reach them because they were detained without access to a lawyer, without access to speaking to their families for quite some time, and certainly no ability to speak to a journalist.

6:02But in the context of Ghana, I was actually, I received one of the strangest calls of my life that Meredith was on the phone call, on a WhatsApp call on a Saturday morning. And so were 11 people who were in a military detention camp in Ghana. These were people who, many of them had deep roots in the U.S. and had been working jobs, parenting U.S. citizen children. And they'd been rounded up and deported to Ghana. And they called me essentially from this detention camp where I could literally see on the video call an armed guard in their presence. They were unable to leave. And they were truly saying that they feared for their lives, that they were about to be sent back to their countries of origin from which they had serious fears of persecution or even fears of being killed.

6:47So it was very palpable. I could see literally the sweat on their faces as they pled for hoping that they would get attention on their cases so they wouldn't be removed to those countries. But sadly, shortly after that phone call, many of them, perhaps even all of them, were sent back to countries where they feared persecution. Well, we heard from another member of the tax club who says, I believe it's fine. We have accumulated a lot of criminals fleeing their own country. The countries they originate from will not take them back. Well, Meredith, as we said, the administration claims that DHS and ICE target those with criminal records for these kinds of deportations.

7:27As far as those we know the administration deported to third countries, How many have a criminal record? Among those who were deported to Ghana and Equatorial Guinea, who I and my colleagues have been speaking with, the vast majority do not have any criminal record whatsoever. While the administration and the Department of Homeland Security are highlighting cases where they say, you know, people have these criminal records, etc. In fact, most who have been subjected to these third country deportations do not. And for those who do have criminal records, what is the process there as it relates to third-party or third-country deportations?

8:10These are people, again, who have committed a crime, served their time in U.S. prisons. What do process rights, are they allowed or owed under the law? The Immigration and Nationality Act sets out specific processes to determine what country a person may be deported to. And the Department of Homeland Security is required to follow this process. Generally, that starts with, well, not generally, but it starts with the country the person designates, followed by the country that that person is a citizen of. And then there's a series that DHS must go through after that before deporting someone to any third country.

8:59ICE cannot just deport someone to any country they choose. They have to follow that process as laid out under the Immigration and Nationality Act. So the people we're talking about were in ICE detention in the U.S. right before the government deported them. Meredith, what do we know about what ICE officers told them before they were sent to these third countries? ICE officers in many cases did not tell people much of anything about what was happening, but some of the things they were told were not actually true. For example, some individuals were told they were being transferred to a different ICE detention center.

9:38Others were told that they were being deported directly to their countries, notwithstanding that they had orders of protection from being deported to those countries. And in many cases, people did not find out until they were in the air on the plane that they were being deported to a third country. So if someone is being detained by the U.S. government, they're woken up in the middle of the night and told they're leaving for a flight somewhere, what legal rights do they have in that moment? And what enforcement mechanisms are in place to ensure those rights are followed? The Immigration and Nationality Act and the Convention Against Torture prohibit sending anyone to a country where their life or freedom would be in danger.

10:27So the fact that ICE is pulling people out of their beds in the middle of the night and forcing them onto these planes, we're already past the point of following the law because ICE has not provided notice. They have not provided a person any opportunity to state any reason why they shouldn't be deported to this country. That's what's required under the law. And that is what Judge Murphy emphasized in his order striking down the administration's third country deportation policy. Sarah, what fears of persecution or torture did you hear from some of the people you spoke to? It was a wide range, but one of the cases that's coming to mind is a young woman named Miriam who had originally fled Togo because she had been tortured by relatives facing female genital mutilation.

11:25and she had really credible fears that a U.S. judge affirmed that she could face very serious harms if she was sent back to Togo. So she's one of the young women that I interviewed who was in the military detention camp in Ghana and who ultimately was refouled. So they're calling it chain refoulement. So essentially the U.S. government in international law and other governments are not supposed to send people back to places where they have credible fear of that kind of torture, but that is what happened to Miriam and to many others. I spoke to other women who had fled genital mutilation, but also people who had been human rights advocates in their home countries or who had fled civil war after their parents were murdered.

12:09So it was quite a broad range of the conventional reasons people might have to flee for their lives. Let's hear now from someone who the Trump administration deported to Equatorial Guinea. We'll call him Benjamin. We aren't using his real name because he fears persecution. He immigrated to the U.S. from a country in East Africa. Benjamin says ICE agents took him from a detention facility in the U.S. and put him on a flight without letting him contact his immigration attorney. He says agents refer to him as, quote, trash. He's now detained by the government of Equatorial Guinea, and here he is describing his detention there.

12:42This country, they don't even want to give us any protection. They are trying to send us back to our country where we are fearing persecution. And in this country, we don't have any guarantee to stay in this country. I was hoping to be treated like a human being. I have a hope. One day, all these things will be fixed. And maybe I will get the justice. But for now, all my dream, all my sacrifice and all my hope to be safe has collapsed because maybe they will send me back to my country. I don't know what will be waiting back in my home country. Again, that was Benjamin, an immigrant from East Africa who the U.S.

13:36deported to Equatorial Guinea. Now, the Department of Homeland Security outlined this policy in a memo last March. That memo said DHS could go ahead with the deportation if it has diplomatic assurances from these third countries, like Equatorial Guinea or Ghana or Eswatini, that a person deported there wouldn't face torture or persecution. And the memo also said the State Department had to find those assurances credible. And if so, DHS could go ahead with the deportation, quote, without the need for further procedure. Sarah, what did you find happened in practice when the Trump administration deported people to these countries that gave those assurances?

14:15I mean, you're exactly right that the issue at stake is, are these credible diplomatic assurances? And now I think we have very clear documentation that there's not a lot of credibility to those claims, that these people will be protected. because, as Meredith has systematically documented in litigation, client after client after client has been sent back to countries, including countries from which they had protections from being sent back to. So it seems as if there's a very clear pattern at this point and a well-documented reality of chain refoulement. Meredith, what do these agreements generally say the countries can do with these deportees once they're out of U.S.

14:53custody? The agreements are not particularly clear on that point, but what we have seen happen is that when people are sent to third countries, they are detained upon arrival. They're not free to leave. They are not offered access to the asylum system, to any form of protection. They are simply detained indefinitely until being sent on to another country. In almost every case that we identified and tracked, the person was either sent back to the country where they'd been ordered protection from or they were sent to a fourth country, often to which they similarly had no ties. Now, Sarah, the U.S.

15:38government has struck deals with many countries to accept deported immigrants, places like Belize, Paraguay, Rwanda, Uzbekistan. What do these countries get in return for doing this? Money. So it's essentially, we've seen quite a number of deals that have been negotiated rather secretly, I should say, because it's taken a lot of work to even unearth what the specifics of these deals entail. And I think there's still a lot we do not know. But recently, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put forth a report that documented quite a number of the deals we do know about. Places like Rwanda, where there's been the U.S.

16:15government pledged$7.5 million in exchange for Rwanda taking 250 deportees. We know that Eswatini took upwards of$5 million in this memorandum of understanding. We understand essentially that the U.S. government is paying the country to receive these third country deportees, but then not a lot seems to be followed up on in terms of how those countries are honoring international law after the deportations are effectuated. We're discussing the administration's deportations of immigrants to third countries they have no connection to. Patty in Bloomington texted, What is wrong with our country that anyone thinks this policy is okay?

16:55And Paul in Wichita emails, Cruelty is the point of Trump's third country deportation. This is a continuation of family separation from his first term. When we elect a cruel man a second time, it only encourages his cruel policies. Still to come, what a recent federal court ruling means for the future of this deportation policy. That's just ahead.

17:19This message comes from Wealthfront. It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you. With Wealthfront's cash account, you earn a competitive APY on your cash from program banks higher than the average savings rate with free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. Go to Wealthfront.com. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC. Member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable annual percentage yield. Let's get back to our discussion of the Trump administration's third country deportations policy. We got this email from one of you. My son-in-law, the kindest, gentlest person ever, is detained in Cameroon because of a third country deportation.

18:03He requested and was denied a yellow fever vaccine and malaria prevention meds. My entire family needs this beloved family member home with us. The U.S. government has not disclosed the terms of the agreement between the U.S. and Cameroon. And one of you in the text club writes, I'm aware of this policy and think it's horrific. Is it constitutional? Well, last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Massachusetts ruled on the administration's third country deportation policy. Judge Brian Murphy said the deportations were unlawful and the government needed to try to deport detained immigrants to their home countries first.

18:37He paused his ruling for 15 days to allow the administration to appeal. Howie reached out to both the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs enforcement for more on the reasoning of its deportation policy and whether the government would appeal Judge Murphy's ruling. A statement from a DHS spokesperson reads, in part, quote, the Trump administration has the constitutional authority to remove these criminal illegal aliens and clean up this national security nightmare. If these activist judges have their way, aliens who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won't take them back, including convicted murderers, child rapists, and drug traffickers would walk free on American streets.

19:15You can read the department's full statement at our website, the1a.org. Just a reminder that many of the people deported to third countries had asylum claims and legal protection from immigration courts to stay in the U.S. And while some of them had criminal records, many of them did not, including the Guatemalan man whose case Judge Murphy ruled on last week. Meredith, I'd like to hear your response to the statement there from the DHS spokesperson. I mean, it's just false. It's just false that DHS is using third country deportations in the manner it describes. As you mentioned, and it has been reported, most of the people who are subjected to these deportations have had no interaction with the criminal law system at all.

20:02Furthermore, regardless of anyone's criminal record, everyone has a right to due process. And that is what Judge Murphy emphasized in his order, is that all persons within the U.S. are entitled to due process. And dragging someone out of their bed in the middle of the night and shoving them onto a military cargo plane to a country that they've never been to, have no ties to, without any opportunity to object to that does not comport with due process and is not legal. But given the fact that some of these people had legal protections against being deported back to their home countries because they feared persecution or death, whether they're still being held in a third country or have been returned to their country of origin, if ultimately it's found that this policy is unlawful in the face of an administration appeal.

20:58At this point, Meredith, is there any legal remedy for these deportees? The language in Judge Murphy's order is very insightful in the sense that it clearly states that these third country deportations are unlawful. And what those who have been subjected to, you know, in being deported to a third country over these past several months is unconstitutional and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. So the language there is very, you know, definitely is helpful in the sense that people may be seeking redress. They may have avenues to have their case reopened before an immigration court.

21:48And additionally, people who are potentially, who are detained now and who are facing this happening to them as well may be able to rely on language in Judge Murphy's order in, for example, a habeas corpus petition. Sarah, you spoke to family members of some of the people the administration deported to Ghana. President Trump, his spokespeople, DHS, they often describe immigrants it deports using inhumane language. What did the immigrants you spoke to and their family members say about that tactic and how it affects them? I mean, there was an extraordinary amount of fear for starters. I mean, many of these families did not want to speak, and they really only spoke under the conditions of duress, of fearing that their loved ones were about to be deported to a really dangerous situation while waiting in the military detention camp in Ghana.

22:36So that was the first thing, of course, that stood out, is how many stories we're probably not hearing because so many of these deportations are happening under the cover of night without clear communication, without the ability of people who are being subjected to it to contact their loved ones, and then their loved ones are also living with a tremendous amount of fear. Even people I spoke to who are U.S. citizens who have loved ones who have been sent to third countries this way fear speaking up because they don't know whether they, too, might be subject to retaliation. But that was certainly true of the families I spoke to who have more precarious immigration status.

23:14And in terms of the conditions these deportees are living under once they're sent to these third countries. What did you learn about that? The conditions are essentially what you would imagine of being held in a maximum security prison in a country like Eswatini. So both the conditions of tremendous isolation, the difficulty of being able to even reach an attorney or a loved one, the food conditions. Some of them actually wound up going on hunger strike to protest the conditions they were facing in detention in Eswatini. What we saw in El Salvador has become quite notorious with the SICOT prison, where people were being sent from other countries and being held and subjected to torture, sexual assault, and allegations that are really quite severe of that nature.

24:02And I think it's also, just to step backwards for a moment to the DHS claim you read, I think it's also really important to emphasize the DHS narrative was that these were folks whose countries wouldn't take them back, but in many circumstances what I found in my interviews was that that was not the case. Like the Jamaican individual I mentioned who was detained in Eswatini, Jamaica actually never said that they would not take him back and his family's assumption would be and was that he would be deported to Jamaica. So I think it's also key to stress this happened at extraordinary expense to taxpayers.

24:33So there's millions of dollars being given in these deals that we discussed But there's also a huge amount of money being paid simply to ship these people around the world. And then in Orville's case, the Jamaican individual, he was ultimately finally released and sent back to Jamaica. So the expenses that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee estimated can be military flights that are$32 ,000 an hour. And even maybe as much as$1 million being spent on one individual being subjected to this. So I think I just also wanted to stress it's quite an expensive policy that is being put into place without much clearer reason.

25:12We got this question from Karen who emails, is the U.S. engaging in human trafficking when deporting people to third countries given the monetary exchange happening? And as we said, these deportations depend on agreements the Trump administration is striking with other countries. and as you just laid out, Sierra, millions of dollars paid to governments, including directly. What kind of oversight would the U.S. normally employ when it strikes an agreement with another country? Well, I mean, at the very least, you'd expect transparency about how the U.S. tax dollars are being allocated. But I think another big issue and another reason we're lacking that transparency is that a lot of the deals that are being struck are happening with countries that have very clearly poor human rights records and histories of corruption.

26:00So this is happening a number of the countries that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hooked into in regard to these contracts were countries that had a long history of the State Department saying, like, these are places that we do not deem safe. These are places that we deem to be regularly committing human rights violations. So I think that's another key part of the context of secrecy as well. We also got this from Stephen who asks, for those people sent to the notorious prison in El Salvador, doesn't that amount to incarceration or extradition? In a deportation, the individual is free when they arrive in the country they're sent to.

26:34Meredith? There are definitely parallels here with, there are certainly parallels. When a person is deported by the United States to another country, if they're being deported to just be detained, that's something beyond what we might normally think about when we conceive of deportation. This is something beyond that. This is something that bears all the hallmarks of a punitive system. So yes, I certainly agree that there are parallels there. Well, in the opening of his ruling, Judge Murphy referred to an earlier exchange in the case between him and a government lawyer. He asked the lawyer if the Trump administration believed it was fine to deport someone to a third country, quote, as long as the department doesn't already know that there's someone standing there waiting to shoot that person.